In recent years, printers which import image data acquired by image sensing devices such as digital still cameras, and the like and print them on printing media such as photographic printing paper have prevailed at home.
In such home use printer, since the user need only set an ink ribbon and photographic printing paper in advance, he or she enjoy photo printing with high image quality by importing image data and inputting a printing instruction. For this reason, people who enjoy photo printing at home are increasing recently.
For such home use printer, advance preparations (setting of an ink ribbon and photographic printing paper, importing of image data, and the like) are required to be simplified as much as possible, and proposals that aim at improving the operability in preparations have been made conventionally.
For example, a printer which comprises a cartridge that integrates an ink ribbon and photographic printing paper is known. Using such cartridge, two works, that is, settings of an ink ribbon and photographic printing paper are reduced to one work, that is, loading of a cartridge, thus simplifying the preparations.
Note that it is a common practice for the integrated cartridge described above to use cut sheets as photographic printing paper. However, photographic printing paper arranged in a cartridge is not limited to cut sheets, but roll paper prepared by winding strip-shaped photographic printing paper around a roller may be used.
When roll paper is used as photographic printing paper, a compact cartridge can hold large amounts of photographic printing paper, and cartridges for different print sizes can share a feeding mechanism.
Upon printing using cut sheets, since a sheet needs to be held at the time of printing, a cut sheet larger than a printing region must be prepared. After printing, the user must cut a portion which is set to be larger than the printing region so as to hold the sheet by himself or herself. By contrast, in case of roll paper, a printer comprises a cutter for cutting photographic printing paper, and photographic printing paper is cut inside the printer. Hence, only the printing region can be cut and provided to the user.
When the cartridge houses roll paper as photographic printing paper, the roll paper operates as follows in the printer upon printing.
The roll paper wound around the roller is pulled outside the cartridge, and is inserted between a thermal head and platen roller via conveyance rollers together with an ink ribbon. After that, since a printing region is reciprocally conveyed before and after the thermal head while the ink ribbon is superposed on the printing region, thus applying inks of respective colors. The roll paper on which the inks are applied is cut at the cutting position, and is discharged. In this way, printing is complete, and the pulled roll paper is rewound into the cartridge, thus returning a state before the beginning of printing.
Upon completion of printing and rewinding the roll paper, if the leading end of the roll paper is completely rewound into the cartridge, the roll paper cannot be pulled out from the cartridge again.
When the pulled roll paper is rewound after printing, the leading end of the roll paper needs to be controlled to stop while it is left outside the cartridge. However, in this case, since the roll paper extends outside the cartridge, it may be damaged upon detaching the cartridge.
On the other hand, by providing rollers inside the cartridge, it is possible to feed the roll paper which is rewound inside the cartridge to outside the cartridge. However, in this case, the cartridge must have a complicated structure.
When the cartridge is detached from the printer after printing, and the roller of the cartridge and a rotation mechanism of the printer are disengaged, the roller of the cartridge is free to pivot. For this reason, if the roller pivots and the leading end of the roll paper is unwantedly rewound, the leading end of the roll paper can never be pulled out from the cartridge.
For this reason, it is desired for the cartridge which houses the roll paper to adapt an arrangement which can surely pull the roll paper outside the cartridge, so as to attain smooth printing upon re-loading the cartridge.